1. Field of The Invention
The situation for retail stores is problematic. Shoplifting is increasing and in 1988 amounted to approximately 2000 million Swedish Crowns, in the Swedish clothing retail market alone.
The type of thieves differ depending on the location of the shops but generally speaking, they could look just ordinary. No specific category of persons can be declared suspect-free in advance. It might be a senior citizen looking for excitement, a well dressed businessman who "forgot" to pay, a housewife wearing a fur coat specially designed for shop-lifting or teen-agers who consider stealing to be smart and a "tough" thing to do.
Considering these facts, the shop attendants, who are to watch the articles in the shop and see to it that they are not stolen, cannot categorize a person in advance as a "typical" shop-lifter.
A considerable part of the shop attendants' time and energy is therefore directed to "watching" the customers instead of performing their proper tasks--to sell and give service. Furthermore, the shop becomes a place where suspicion has to be directed on everybody.
The solution is for the staff to apply anti-theft devices to the articles in the shop.
This is done to a large extent, but unfortunately the alarm systems are far from perfect, as is proved by the afore-noted figure 2000 million Swedish Crowns as the value of stolen clothes in Sweden during one year.
Some clothes shops in exposed locations have to calculate with a loss in stolen articles amounting to 8% of the total turn over.
2. Description of The Prior Art
The predominant anti-theft technique used today is a device consisting of an anti-theft tab fastened to the article that is to be protected, and a detector that reacts when an anti-theft tab passes by. When this happens, the detector makes a noise that makes the staff aware of the attempted theft.
Unfortunately there are several techniques to "cheat" the systems with rather simple methods--e.g. it is possible to screen off the electronics or to remove the tab from the article by pinching off the lock-pin.
A few years ago another alarm system was introduced to the market--the so called "paint-clip". In this system there are no signals or other means to attract attention to the fact that an attempt at a theft is taking place. Instead with this technique, if the clip is removed in an incorrect manner, there is a risk that the stolen article becomes discolored.
The weakness of this system is that the thief can steal a number of theft-protected articles from the shop without being noticed, then coax the alarms out in another place, and maybe succeed with some.
Specially constructed tools for opening the alarm without breaking them also exist.
The problems of shop-lifting thus are of three different types.
1. The anti-theft tabs are coaxed open inside the shop and removed from the article, usually by pinching off the lock-pin. PA0 2. The stolen item is removed from the shop with the alarm still attached whilst the anti-theft tab is screened off so that the signal from it does not activate the detector. PA0 3. Articles protected with paint-clips are removed from the shop and the alarm is opened in a safe place.